*crawls out of the grave* MWAHAHAHAHA! I liiiive!
Okay in all seriousness, I will finish this fic, but I don't know if I'm going to be staying the Naruto fandom anymore. The story's gotten kind of blah and too many great characters are being killed for my taste. I did appreciate the reveal of all 9 Jinchuuriki, though, even if most of them are unnamed. Hey that's our job, right? ;) Killerbee is also great and I hope that he at least gets more about him written in fanfiction since it looks like he's not going to show up in the manga (or the anime for that matter!) anytime soon.
Sorry about the boring rant. Anyways, on with the fic:
Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, Studio Perriot and Aniplex, and Viz Manga. I am making no money or royalties off of this. Please do not sue me or my family/friends. Thanks.
"There was a common joke within the Iwa forces during the Ninja Wars: How do you fight someone with the Sharingan? The reply was invariable: You don't!" – From the diary of Tsuchi, Rei.
Shinji's eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he clenched his teeth in concentration. Damnit, he'd be practicing chakra-molding for months and still that Uchiha kid's signature was decreasing faster than his. It just wasn't fair! That arrogant guy had always excelled at whatever they did without any visible effort. Sakura had left them in the dust almost half an hour ago, though. He couldn't even sense her anymore. You'd never have thought that this was the Uchiha cheerleader that fainted at the sight of her beloved Sasuke-kun's "death." Shinji couldn't help smiling faintly at the memory of the day they became Team 7.
Sakura was forlornly still, tied to the log as the boys sat despondently on either side of her. Their sensei just glared at them sternly from behind his mask as he lectured them.
"Sasuke you did the best out of your team, but rejected their help with no thought for their safety."
The Uchiha heir just glared sullenly at his teacher.
"Sakura, you might have sought to help Shinji, but instead remained hidden in an effort to back up Sasuke."
Sakura hung her head miserably.
Finally, Kakashi turned to the last member of his would-be team.
"And Shinji, you abandoned Sakura and tried to take me on using only Sasuke as your teammate!"
"Well, sensei, can you blame me? This girl is beyond useless! All she cares about is impressing Uchiha: that's probably the only reason she decided to become a ninja!"
"That's not true!" Sakura protested.
"Yeah? Prove it." Shinji replied contemptuously. Sakura bit her lip and looked away.
"Mah, what a hopeless group." Kakashi commented dryly, "None of you going back to the academy."
"What? Really?" Sakura squealed.
"Yes, all of you should just quit trying to become ninja altogether." Kakashi snapped.
Shinji's jaw dropped as Sakura gasped in horror. Sasuke leapt to his feet with a hard gleam in his eyes and charged furiously at Kakashi. Within two seconds, the Uchiha prodigy was flat on the ground, his sensei restraining him with ease. Kakashi continued speaking casually,
"All of you missed the whole point of this exercise. Well, Shinji did have the right idea, but was poor in executing it."
"I was?" Shinji asked mystified.
"You said it yourself, 'One genin can't possibly take on a jounin, but several genin stand a chance.' Your problem lay in that you didn't consider Sakura a comrade and abandoned her."
"Can I help it that she's weak and doesn't deserve to be on this team?" Shinji snarled.
"So, you think she's a liability, do you?" Kakashi asked, his single eye gleaming, "Well then -" Kakashi tossed him a kunai, "-go on, get rid of her."
"Sensei?" Sakura whispered in disbelief. Shinji weighed the kunai in his hand, staring at it. From his restrained position, Sasuke watched helplessly.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" Shinji growled.
"On a mission, suppose Sakura gets injured or falls behind due to her 'weakness'. Would you have the guts to end it then?"
Shinji tightened his grip around the kunai and threw it. The kunai bit into the trunk of a nearby tree, still vibrating from the impact. Kakashi studied the angry genin with amusement.
"Mah, looks like you can't. Oh well," he said, turning away, "I'll give you three one more chance. Sasuke and Shinji, finish your lunches. Since Sakura performed the worst out of you three, she will have to stay tied to the log while you two eat. If either of you two gives her anything, you'll automatically fail."
Sakura bit back a sob as Kakashi vanished. It was so unfair! Shinji and Sasuke exchanged wary glances before unpacking the bentos and beginning to eat. Sakura's stomach let out a hungry growl at the wonderful smells emanating from the boxed lunches. Both boys turned to stare at her. She held back her tears and glared at them,
"Don't you dare worry about me! I'm on a diet anyway! I can handle going without food."
Shinji scowled at this as he shoved a roll into his mouth. He swallowed, then scooped up some rice and held it in front of her mouth. Sakura pursed her lips and closed her eyes, but the smell still wafted across her nose.
Shinji sighed. The girl was surprisingly stubborn. This was a far cry from that weak girl who'd fainted at the sight of her beloved Sasuke-kun being injured. As much as he appreciated seeing this side of her, a teammate who was weak from hunger would be no help if they wanted to be able to take on a jounin.
"Did you know that girls who go on diets become infertile later on?" he asked slyly, "Sasuke's probably not going to be interested in marrying a girl that can't give him babies!"
Sasuke flushed and glared at Shinji who beamed benignly at him from behind Sakura. Sakura blanched at the thought of not being able to carry children and quickly began to devour the rice offered by Shinji.
All at once, the sky became dark and overcast as a whirlwind of fury with Kakashi at the center of it bore towards them.
"You! Didn't I specifically warn you not to feed her? Why did you disobey me?" The masked jounin thundered.
Shinji went silent in fear as Sakura felt the small amount of rice she'd eaten churn in her stomach at the sight of the furious jounin before them. Sasuke glared at him, covering any fear he might feel. He'd come this far, and he refused to let this weird jounin intimidate him.
"We're a team!" Sasuke shouted above the wind, "We take care of each other."
"Y-yes." Shinji agreed after a moment's pause, "Sakura's our teammate. Her weaknesses are ours."
"You guys…" Sakura felt grateful tears seep from her eyes.
"You guys really mean that." The jounin's visible eye had a strange gleam in it, "Alright then…"
"You pass." Kakashi beamed.
Shinji blinked.
"Wait. What?"
Kakashi smiled reassuringly.
"The whole point of this exercise was to test you on the most important quality a shinobi can have: the willingness to sacrifice everything for their comrades. Shinobi who disobey the rules may be trash, but shinobi that abandon their teammates are worse than trash. Congratulations, all of you. You're officially genin."
And so they'd accidentally passed Kakashi-sensei's hidden test. As much as that unconventional jounin weirded him out, Shinji couldn't help admiring the guy. His aunt confided in him that Kakashi was once her senpai in the elite ANBU Black Ops team. The very group Shinji hoped to join one day. The thought of his dream gave him another burst of determination and he almost entirely concealed his chak-
Shinji gasped and opened his eyes. Both Sakura and Sasuke stared at him in mild surprise as he jumped to his feet.
"Hmm?" Kakashi looked blankly at his spooked student over the open Icha Icha book, "What's wrong?"
"I-I felt something. It's weird but I could almost sense a fifth person near us!" Shinji babbled, staring behind him.
"You're crazy." Sakura snapped, glaring at him in disdain, "If Sasuke-kun or Kakashi-sensei couldn't sense anything, how on earth could you?"
"I know what I felt!" Shinji glared back at her, "It didn't feel human is all. Maybe that's why no one noticed. It's just too big to be an animal."
Kakashi stared at his student thoughtfully, and then with a sigh shut his book.
"Well if it makes you feel any better, I'll check it out."
With that, he pulled up his lopsided headband, revealing a strange red eye with black markings circling the pupil. Sasuke's eyes darkened as he saw the painfully familiar sight of his heritage.
"Sharingan!"
---
Rei almost fell out of the tree at the sight as the silver-haired man calmly lifted his headband, revealing a blood-red eye with three swirling tomoes. He had the Sharingan?!
And here he'd almost hoped that he'd be able to observe his enemy without a fight! He'd almost been insulted that the shinobi would return to his team so casually after that other one went after him. Still, it would have been easier to avoid a fight and just lay low while Musan finished up their spy work. Oh well.
Konoha shinobi were notoriously protective of their subordinates, particularly their students. Let's test this one's resolve...
---
Sakura might have been nervous if Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei hadn't been there. Now that she focused her own chakra, she grudgingly had to admit that something was…off. She couldn't figure out how a screw-up like Shinji would notice it before Sasuke-kun or even her. Of all of them, Shinji was the definitely the slowest. His grades were the second-lowest in their class, only slightly ahead of Shikamaru who was notorious for napping through tests. He was abysmal at any kind of test, written or otherwise. It was a miracle that he'd passed the final as it was.
"Hmm? That's strange…" Kakashi commented, his eyes narrowed. All at once, his eyes widened as several kunai buried themselves into his chest.
Sakura let out a horrified scream as their sensei slumped over lifelessly, blood pooling about his limp body. Sasuke leapt to his feet, kunai drawn as a dark figure appeared behind them
"Man that was easier than I thought. Konoha really has gone soft." An amused voice commented.
"Who are you?" Shinji gasped.
The strange green-haired man didn't answer and just smirked. With a speed Sakura didn't know was possible, he dodged Sasuke's kunai and easily threw Shinji into the trunk of a tree with an offhand blow. Her classmate groaned with pain and lay flat. Sakura clutched her kunai and faced him warily.
Don't freeze, a ninja is without fear. She chanted to herself silently, A ninja is without fear.
He lunged toward her and she was just beginning to coil her legs to spring for the tree's cover when a dark figure leapt in front of her.
Sasuke. She was barely able to contain her shock before the stranger was knocked off-balanced by Kakashi. How?
Kakashi smiled behind his mask as he held a kunai to the throat of the mysterious nin.
"You should really be more cautious. A ninja looks for what is beneath the beneath."
The captured nin smirked.
"Practice what you preach, Konoha-ninja."
The stranger's body crumbled to dust. Kakashi's eyes widened.
"An Earth Bunshin!"
Sakura heard a cry behind her and twisted to stare in horror. Shinji was caught in an Earth jutsu that twisted around his neck and brought him punishingly to the ground. She was about to race for her teammate's side when Sasuke harshly grasped her arm.
"Don't. He's compromised. Interference will only make it worse."
"But…"
"What do you want?" Kakashi asked calmly, staring toward the trees where their enemy was evidently hiding.
"If you're as experienced as you look, no doubt you fought in the Ninja wars. You know what this jutsu can do and how quickly it kills. Call for aid and the boy dies." Their enemy's voice floated from the trees and Sakura couldn't pinpoint where exactly it came from.
"Shinji!" Sakura called helplessly.
Her teammate's eyes flickered at her call and he managed to choke out.
"D-don't care about me. Should've moved…own fault. Kill…me, don't let him…"
He choked as the rock around his throat tightened.
"You've got a brave one there, but not very bright." The voice commented with amusement, "If he meant nothing to you, you wouldn't have waited for demands. You care about your team, don't you? So don't let them die. Cover your Sharingan."
Sakura felt helpless tears well up, despite emotional training from the Academy. Shinji may have been a stubborn annoying idiot, but damnit, she didn't want him die! Not like this, not in front of her while she couldn't do anything!
"Sakura." She lifted her head to see Kakashi sensei smiling down at her from behind his mask, "It'll be alright. I swear I won't let Shinji or anyone else on our team die."
"Sensei." Sakura whispered gratefully.
Sasuke smiled and readied his kunai.
"Go." Both Kakashi and Sasuke split and leapt for the trees. Sasuke burst through the canopy below the mysterious nin as Kakashi's shadow clone caught him from the side. The stranger was barely able to avoid their combined attack, only to fall into Kakashi's ambush. Kakashi sent a blow to the stranger's face that sent him careening through the fragile branches at the end of the tree and tumbling harshly to the forest floor. The Earth jutsu around Shinji's neck crumbled and he gasped for breath, lying weakly on his back.
"Shinji." Sakura hurried to his side and checked his vital signs. She heard the crashes and the screams from within the grove and smiled viciously. Whoever that strange nin was, he would pay for hurting their teammate!
Right then, a little more back story on my OC and some action! Thanks to:
Book Mad TJ
Bassclone13
JediClaire
VampyreVixen16
DarkRavie
Power of Insanity
for reviewing!
Preview for next Chapter:
"What is that thing?" Ten Ten shouted over the roar of the wind and waves.
Neji couldn't reply, his pale eyes wide with shock. He doubted whether she'd believe him.
"Whoa, it's a huge turtle!" Naruto shouted, grinning with glee, "Hey Gaara, ever wanted to try turtle soup?"
"This is really not the time to be thinking of food." Gaara replied dryly, sand swirling about his feet.
The huge beast roared, raising its battered and misshapen head from the depths of the churning waters.